


Once More Unto The Breach

by gogollescent



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-07
Updated: 2012-08-07
Packaged: 2017-11-11 16:29:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/480533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gogollescent/pseuds/gogollescent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>HSO br5 etc etc. Kanaya and Karkat in the Land of Rays and Frogs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once More Unto The Breach

She doesn't meet him in person until well after they're both safely in the game. They're not FLARPers, and the desert is a long way from Karkat's quiet lawnring. The desert is a long way from everywhere.   
  
The Land of Rays and Frogs is in some ways a still more isolated expanse; there's something profoundly quiet about the rush of light over water, the deep transparent seas. Where in the desert speech could carry for miles and for years, and the echoes of other people's lives wandered, hungry, across sand, LORAF damps every disturbing sound, and drinks the bodies up.   
  
But Karkat comes from the sky, building through her gate until he can leap safely from roof to fragmentary earth. And, for all that she's never seen him, he looks like she thought he would. It's remotely gratifying to see him struggle and swear as he brushes mud from his pants (the leap, though safe, was not uneventful), to trace the inefficient splay of hands-over-knees. "What?" he says, when he sees her looking at him-- " _what?_ "-- when she almost laughs.  
  
"Let me help you," she says, and goes to get a brush.  
  
  
  
By the time everyone has been vigorously combed, Karkat is clearly tired: his eyes rusty at the corners and his pupils claustrophobically small. He insists, however, on commencement. "We have time," says Kanaya, with a certainty she will lose, but which now resides somewhere in the center of her, settled richly beneath her ribs. "The cloning of Bilious Slick is urgent, but it is not a matter for Knights zombified by sleep debt."  
  
"Where the fuck would I sleep?" says Karkat, apparently unable to directly contradict her assessment of his alertness levels.   
  
"You would be welcome to my coon," says Kanaya, feeling daring. Karkat looks at her sharply, but not lengthily; he is too far gone for sustained edges. They are all low on sopor, and while Kanaya's sleep tends to be restful with or without ameliorating agents, she knows that Karkat has yet to wake up, has yet to learn how pleasant dreams can be. How very useful.   
  
"Well," he says, grudging as he ever was on Trollian, "I guess. But you should at least show me the set-up first."  
  
She does.  
  
  
  
After that they are productive. They range farther and farther out, until her hive is a white wedge on the too-curved horizon, and for miles around there is nothing but interlinking bodies of water and land. And, of course, the ceaseless pinstriped sky. Karkat overheats rapidly in his heavy sweater and long trousers; LORAF is humid, though from inside her room she thought it looked cool as a highblood's kiss. The heat gathers slowly and then, all at once, solidifies. Karkat never takes his sweater off.   
  
Truth be told, she's disappointed. Karkat has always been vulnerable, but she was hoping for some signature reveal, now that they are spending so much time together, face to face. As she is sure they will succeed in breeding the frog, she is sure he will eventually bare his weaknesses to her directly. They have meandering conversations that loop back in on themselves, and that, too, is part of her campaign; like breeding frogs, it can only take so many repetitions until he shows a flaw.  
  
Kanaya is patient. She's done with Vriska's endless mess, the violence of her confessions. Karkat may be a surprisingly tough nut to crack, but that's part of the pleasure of it: like the way he sits hunched in on himself, rather than occupying as much space as he possibly can. Like the way the gravity of his presence doesn't alter the way she perceives the surrounding world. His hair falls in his eyes and thrashes outward from his nape, but it's not untamable, not wild, not full of hopeless and unreachable dark.  
  
  
  
At Skaiaset they sit with their feet in the water, watching the rays penetrate the lake. They fall straight as yardsticks from the sky, long and fine and brilliant, but when they hit water they bend like straws.  
  
"We're never going to make it," says Karkat, his tone full of unfamiliar despair. They have hit setbacks. His unhappiness, though, is disproportionate to the significance of the obstacles they face. Kanaya pats him kindly on the back, knowing that the important thing is that she is here for him in his strange, diffuse upset. And he leans into the touch.  
  
"We will so," she tells him. "We will make it. Both figuratively and also literally, by which I mean, we will create the frog whose tremendous blowsack will host a universe."   
  
"You're so full of crap," says Karkat, and looks for a moment like he wants to lean his head on her shoulder. Kanaya holds herself very still, trying to make a somewhat bony joint look as inviting as possible, but it's apparently insufficient, because after a moment he brings his knees up to rest against his chest, his bare toes dripping water, his bare feet shining in reflected bands.  
  
Sometimes she misses Vriska so much that it's impossible to bear.  
  
"Karkat," she says, and there's something in her voice, opening like a chasm. She moves her mouth around the forest of her teeth. She goes on. "I've seen it. I've seen our success. Don't you trust me?"  
  
He looks at her, blindly. His mouth trembles like a suspended stone.

  



End file.
